Mosaic Tapas has served its last customers in downtown St. Louis and Des Peres.

Owner Claus Schmitz shuttered the two restaurants, effective Sept. 3, according to a sign outside the downtown restaurant, located at 1001 Washington Ave. The Mosaic concept at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport will stay open.

Schmitz told St. Louis Magazine the reasons were personal, not business-related. He said he lost focus after getting divorced in 2011 and is planning to move to Australia to be closer to his daughters who live there; the distance from them “weighed heavily” on him “all those years,” he said.

Schmitz’s eatery was a downtown mainstay after opening in 2004. Schmitz moved Mosaic to Washington Avenue in 2008. (He was also an owner of Prime 1000, the $315,000 steakhouse that opened in 2010 on Washington Avenue across from Mosaic.)

The Mosaic restaurant at Lambert opened in 2010. A year later, Mosaic Modern Fusion opened in Des Peres, pushing the combined restaurants to more than $7 million in revenue. READ MORE...